An explanation

Well, I’ve been away for the last … week (has it really been that long?) Two things contributed to that – I bought Simcity 4 and I bought a Tungsten E.

Simcity 4

I’ll admit it – I’m a Simcity fan and when I saw this – I couldn’t resist… Not only that I got it for 24 dollars so yeah – that was nice as well. A word of caution to the wise – this thing _demands_ a powerful processor and raphics card. A goodly amount of RAM helps as well – I could hear my disk swapping halfway through the game. Crazy. In my personal opinion the game is harder now. Much harder from what I remember. In the past, no matter what the circumstances, I was always able to grow my city to a metropolis in a short period of time. No longer. It’s _much_ harder now (or maybe I haven’t played it for long enough?). I’m extremely interested in Rush Hour – I would love to micromange my transit system – now that’s _really_ cool.

Palm Tungsten E

Ok – after so many months of wanting a Palm and over two weeks of lusting after the E, I bought one . In fact, I can almost guarantee that I was one of the _first_ people in Canada to buy one. How do I know this? Well…for one thing I bought mine on Sunday September 28th – 3 days before official release. It caused quite a bit of a stir actually. How did I get a hold of one? Hehe….read on.

Saturday September 27th: I walk into the Staples at 1:00 and while perusing the handheld models (as I had taken to doing in the previous few days) I noticed…the E _and_ the T3 on display. Excited, I asked the salesman if I was able to buy a model yet. “Of course” was his response. Since I was supposed to be in London to meet my sister I resolved to make it back before 6 and buy myself the E. Alas…this was not to be.

Sunday September 28th: I walk into the Staples at 12:15 and ask to buy the Tungsten E. Salesman walks to the cash and rings up a price of 9999.99. I kid you not. Manager comes down. Takes a look and asks what the heck is going on. Assistant manager walks buy at high speed and states “Those are selling for 299.99 in next weeks flyer”. Manager makes a call to Staples head office and converses in French for 10 mins. At the end of this little episode she turns to me and informs me that placing the unit out was a mistake and they aren’t supposed to sell it before the 1st – but purely out of courtesy they’ll let me have the model. After a number of price overrides et al I walk out with a Tungsten E (a couple of days early)!

My opinion: If you want one – go for it! I like mine a lot. You might want to invest in an SD card however – there’s 28.3MB of user available memory and depending on what you’re doing with your PDA, that may not be enough for you. The screen is very bright and clear to read. Now of course – this is an OS5 device. Keep this in mind – those who are waiting for OS6 devices – it may be that the first OS6 device models come out in October 2004. However they’re supposedly ARM native _and_ from the screenshots it looks like they finally have anti-aliasing ;) The E comes with a _large_ bundle of software. It’s got a nice flip cover and a good quality stylus (trust me – this makes a difference). It’s fast (I don’t notice and speed issues) and personally I much prefer the sync cables as opposed to the charger unit. It’s got a great amount of features for the price (my personal opinion). Honestly – you really can’t go wrong with this. If you’re considering an older model like the m130 (which sells for $80 less) – DON’T.

Palm Tungsten T3: It. Is. Beautiful. However it costs $600. This is double the price of the E. _Double_. Consider that carefully. Also consider the fact that you have to buy yourself screen protectors and most probably a hard case. These will run you for sure over 100 dollars (easily). Ask if you’re willing to spend over $800 on a PDA ($600 + $90 tax + over $100 case and sp). It is an amazing machine though. The landscape screen really does make a difference even if you don’t think it will. Things are easier to see etc. Not only that – it has a 400 MHz XScale while the E has a 126MHz OMAP. A number of other extras as well… If anyone I know ends up buying a T3 I’m gonna be envious ;)

The problem: Ah…so _why_ was I away? To put it simply – Palm desktop does not work on Linux. Which uh…sucks. It seems like I’m going to be using my Palm as a standalone device for the forseeable future. Dang.

CRAP – I forgot Teehan’s party today!!! I wanted to go. NOOOOOO….. No way I can get there in time now ;( Very unhappy – looking forward to meeting him and some of the other guys.